Meta quietly added facial recognition to smart glasses, sparking major privacy concerns: report

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta quietly embedded facial recognition tech in its smart glasses, sparking concern from privacy watchdogs, according to a report.The tech, which Meta hasn’t activated yet, came in an app that was downloaded to millions of phones, according to Wired, which analyzed the software.Known internally as “NameTag,” the feature has the capacity to identify people captured by the glasses’ camera and alert the wearer when it recognizes someone, Wired reported.The smart glasses already came under criticism for enabling creeps and wannabe pickup artists to record their unwanted advances toward unsuspecting women and posting the cringe-inducing content online.“NameTag” is embedded in Meta’s AI companion app that’s been downloaded over 50 million times and helps users use key features of its smart glasses, including Ray-Ban and Oakley models. The tech giant discreetly added the code to the AI app over multiple updates this year, according to Wired.If Meta opts to enable the tool, faces captured by the smart glasses will get turned into unique biometric signatures, known as faceprints.Meta’s tech will then check each faceprint it encounters against faceprints already stored on the user’s phone, and even send notifications if it recognizes a match. New faceprints the glasses encounter would be indexed and saved, too.Meta Vice President of Communications Andy Stone emphasized customers can’t actually turn on the facial recognition tech yet.“This is more than shoddy reporting, it’s intellectually dishonest.

Pure advocacy-driven click bait,” he wrote on X.Sign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday.

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Never miss a story.Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels told The Post, “We’ve said before we’re exploring these types of features, and what you’...